Slab City Blues: The Collected Stories by Ryan Anthony

Author:Ryan, Anthony [Ryan, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Crime
Amazon: B015M2FBK4
Goodreads: 26862220
Publisher: Anthony Ryan
Published: 2015-10-01T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

I spent another four hours helping Mina in the mass accumulator, the cavernous rectangular tube that made up the bulk of the Malthus II. It was over a kilometre long and constantly exposed to hard-vac, meaning lots of tricky manoeuvring between the array of massive toruses tracking the length of the tube from the opening to the smelter.

“Weaponising one of these is strictly illegal,” I commented. “There’s a whole bunch’ve of treaties about it.”

“When we get to trial, I’ll tell them you forced me at gunpoint.” She grabbed a hand-hold and punched a button below a faded sign reading: ‘Exocore Industries Mass Driver - Wotan Class.’

“Wotan,” she muttered, shaking her head. “They do like their mythical allusions. It’s just a series of ultra-high powered electro-magnets, old but reliable. Sucks in any rock with a high iron content, kinda like a giant vacuum cleaner.” She gestured for me to watch as she punched a sequence into the control panel. “Luckily whoever designed it also saw there’d be the occasional need to blow as well as suck. We just need to up the velocity. Hundred kilometres a second should do it.”

“We got enough power for that?”

“Just, if we max out both reactors and shut down all other systems.” She gave a sigh of annoyance as the panel lit up with a plethora of warnings, rapidly punching in the overrides with practised ease.

“Done this before?” I asked.

“Done a lot of things before. Just like you.”

“You were in the war.”

“Wasn’t everyone?”

“Way you talked to that tug captain, very convincing.”

“Got something to say, just say it.”

“You were Fed Sec.”

Her gloved hand paused over the keypad as the panel turned green. “Despite the propaganda, your revolution wasn’t universally popular,” she said. “I was a well paid mining engineer with an infant daughter to think of, and a husband who died when a CAOS terrorist put a bomb in his fabricator plant. We all had to choose sides, I chose mine.”

“So they made you an intel specialist. Way I heard it, it’s a role that required surgery.”

She turned away and propelled to the next torus.

“Memory augmentation, right?” I persisted, following. “Instant and total recall of all accrued information. Must get crowded in there.”

“It’s a chip the size of an appleseed sitting on my cerebellum, and it has an off-switch.”

“No bad dreams, huh?”

“No more than you, I’d guess.”

“So when the war ends you scoop up Lucy and head for the Kuiper Belt. You didn’t need to run, y’know. There was a Reconciliation Council, full pardon for all crimes committed by former Fed Sec personnel, ‘cept the really heinous ones of course. The hab-massacres and such. I mean, I can understand running for it if I’d been part of that. Some crimes can’t be forgiven.”

Her hand gave a spasmodic flex before she accessed the panel. “Didn’t want to live in your new world. Knew there’d be no place for me and Lucy there.”

“Really? Well, that’s probably true. Fugitives Retrieval still maintains the list. The Prejudice List it’s called, individuals to be pursued regardless of cost or duration.

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